


december; take two

by VerdantMoth



Series: december [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Recovering, Here is where we abandon canon folks, M/M, Recovery, Sam Wilson Is a Good Bro, Team Feels, Tony Stark Is a Good Bro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:07:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27218401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerdantMoth/pseuds/VerdantMoth
Summary: Winter comes barreling in out of nowhere, all the fury of a bitter, cold ex.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: december [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1986736
Comments: 8
Kudos: 18





	december; take two

**summer**

Steve moves like a, well, a man out of time. He acclimatizes himself to the strange new time, works at learning things. Making list after list of movies and foods and songs to explore. 

Steve trains. 

He fights like he’s chasing ghosts and demons. 

Fights until his fist are more blood and bone then flesh. 

Wakes up, healed and lost, and starts all over. 

He learns, too; learns he is still an artist, but the only thing he can draw is a set of pained eyes. 

Learns he hates what these people call “bananas.” He hates the liquid cheese and the stale noodles. 

Soups alright though, sandwiches better. 

Ice cream too. 

He loves to hate Tony Stark. And he thinks in another life, Tony’d’ve fit in well with a ragtag group of misfit fighters. 

Funny, but now he wonders  _ is there a way to get him there? _

Summer is worse than he remembers. Hotter and wetter and laced with a strange fatigue that has nothing to do with running or fighting or crying. 

Summer is a muggy dream, too loud with the screams of angry pedestrians and the endless honking of strange, beautiful cars. 

They  _ almost _ drown out the ceaseless screams that pinball around Steve’s brain. 

**fall**

He makes a friend. Two, three, a whole team of them. Sam calls it “healing,”

Steve calls it “adapting.” Surviving. 

“Tell me about him,” Steve sometimes asks. He’s selfish, bordering on cruel. 

But Sam obliges. He tells him about Riley, tells him about his heart, lost in the flames. 

“Did it burn like ice?” Steve mumbles once, when Thor’s liquor actually gets him tipsy. 

Sam’s eyes are pained, so pained, so glazed with tears and memories and grief, Steve never asks again.

“You miss him.” Tony doesn’t asks. He  _ tells,  _ like every fucking breath Steve takes doesn’t taste like second hand Lucky Strikes. Like his heart isn’t two beats off kilter every moment. Like every set of pale blue eyes doesn’t look like fear and list and grief. 

“Sometimes,” Steve concedes. 

Tony hands him a file, slides it across a sleek, oak wood table that probably cost more than Steve’s entire old apartment building cost. 

“All the time,” Tony says gently. 

Steve doesn’t know who Tony is missing. And maybe it’s rude not to ask, to grab the manila folder greedily and leave, but he still hears Sam’s sobs and feel him shake. 

He still feels a warm hand slipping from his grasp. 

Fall is floating, golds and reds and oranges carrying him hour after hour to fruitless city after city. 

The colors fade, brown out, until even the blue eyes in his nightmare have a strange yellow tinge. 

At least his art has one more color than blue now. 

**winter**

Winter comes barreling in out of nowhere, all the fury of a bitter, cold ex.

Winter, quite literally, slams through Steve’s window, glinting silver and choking him.

“Bucky,” Steve gasps out. 

For a moment he’s too small and too fragile, begging Bucky for warmth. 

“Bucky,” he chokes. Those eyes, so cold, so  _ empty. _

Bucky slowly,  _ so fucking slowly, _ moves the knife away from Steve’s throat and there’s so much confusion carved into his furrowed brows. 

“Steve.”

Pale eyes go winter storm dark, but the hand around Steve’s throat relaxes. 

Just a fraction, but enough for Steve to greedily suck in painfully frozen air. 

_ “Bucky,”  _ he chokes back out. 

Winter follows Bucky back out the window, flurries of surprise snow whipping behind dark, lanky hair. 

The cold that had gut-punched all of NYC seems insistent on pumping Steve back into the frail boned boy he used to be. 

He curls into damp sheets and tries to decide if he’s finally cracked his sanity into shards. 

Or if Bucky Barnes has come back to life, wearing the season that sucked him away. 

It takes two blizzards and a murder for Steve to get his answer. 

“Wasn’t me,” Bucky croaks out. His voice is splintering icebergs.

The titanic slamming into her end. 

Icicles scrapping old metal trucks. 

It is, quite honestly, Steve’s new favorite lullaby. “Wasn’t him,” he repeats solemnly. 

“I know,” Tony says. He slumps into a chair and he looks…

“Tired,” Bucky fills in. “You need rest.”

Tony eyes Bucky, still wary, still hurt. “You’re one to talk Grimcle.”

Steve grins between them, and he’s still covered in muck and gore, still dredging a thousand nameless horrors behind him. 

But, “You’re gonna help us!”

Sam laughs a little. “Jesus, Steve, ‘course we are.”

Steve sighs, chilly vice releasing his ribs and he’s breathing easier. Curling around Bucky and biting relief into his collarbone and whispering, “Fuck, I love you,” over and over and  _ over _ .

**spring**

Spring remains Steve’s least favorite season. Full of running, full of triggers they wrestle out of Bucky’s head. Full of-

“Bless you,” Bucky grins. 

Steve wipes his hand under his nose and stalks towards Bucky. “Super serum apparently doesn’t fix seasonal allergies.”

“If you wipe snot on my new shirt,” Bucky threatens. 

Steve tackles him into the grass, a cloud of vibrant yellow pollen swallowing them. 

“I like spring,” Bucky says into his neck. His eyes are purple underneath, same purple as the flowers pillowing his head. “Rebirth,” he adds. 

Steve shakes his head, sneezes right in Bucky’s face. “Still hate it.”

Bucky’s brows furrowed. “What’s your favorite then?”

Steve mulls it over.

There is summer, with its oppressive heat and its damp air and its crowds. Summer is fighting and lazy days and exhaustion that seeps beneath the pores. Summer is exploration, his mouth on Bucky’s shoulders. 

Fall is spices, like nutmeg and cardamom. It’s blinding golds and gemstone reds, and the brownish yellow that seeps into the edge of everything. 

It’s moldy hide outs, and his hands in Bucky’s hair.

Fall is running, is being so  _ full _ of Bucky his cries echo between the stripping forest. Fall is the first whispers, the quiet confessions he doesn’t say out loud. 

“Winter,” Steve settles on. 

Winter is huddling too close for warmth. It’s a bitter cold weariness, biting teeth and scathing comments. 

Winter is losing, finding love. Winter is Bucky fucking him into the sheets, Bucky being fucked into the wall. 

Winter is “I love you,” over and over. Melted into rich hot chocolate, stitched into lumpy sweaters, sprinkled over cinnamon rusted nuts.

Winter is a gift, a ring, a vow.

“Would you,” Bucky hesitates. “December? That’s…” 

“No,” Steve growls, head shaking and a furious, bone deep terror rattling his bones. “Not December, never December.”

Never the month they lock themselves away, hide from the world. 

“But after,” Steve sighs. When the year rings in, colorful and new, and they’ve survived another nightmare. 

  
  



End file.
